One Foot in the Mudd

ummm……uhhhh

its 240 Am, i was just trawlling through the hi5 network, some social networking site. it was quite intresting to see some stuff. we all like to live in our own little shells. there seems to be such a huge world out there, and yet, we hardly utilize the power of the internet by gettin to know new people! our frineds on these social networking sites are our friends in real life! strange as it may seem, its like this threshold that we are many a times afraid to step across, defining the new from the old, or met from unmet friends. strange, but it got me thinkgin quite a bit.
It never does open your eyes up, i saw someone’s profile and was just going thru their pictures, and it was such a nice site to see them with their parents, and the dad looked so bwildered whilst the phot was being taken.
this person was somewhere in the phillipines. kinda strange, guess when you get a glimplse of someone’s personal life, you stop to think on how similar lives are around the world. things are not diffirent, i always wonderd why do we try so hard to say that we are different? yes inadvertly we might have some traits, likes and dislikes that are different, but at the end of the day, we stll are the same!

I finally did it, i wrote to those folks, i wonder why i cant get myself to call them complete fuck heads! god, I really hate that company! really really! terrible!
if anyone reads this PLEASE PLEASE don’t buy a whirlpool!

Greetings,

I write this not with disgust, but more with despair and a sense of
shock that i find it very hard to get over, considering the events of
the past one week.

My father is an ex service man, who fought the war, and in my life, he
is my hero. I respect not just him but any service officer, and
whirlpool has taken nothing but a “B-Class” approach to the entire
situation.

We purchases a refrigerator in August 1998, it was the 315Liter single
door, through the Canteen, the dealer who supplied the product sent a
fridge that was rusting and looked worn. We mailed Whirlpool and
someone came to visit us from the dealer and said that he can polish
the fridge and make it look new. This was appalling. We asked him to
leave and had still heard nothing from the company.

the fridge was of substandard quality with the freezer door breaking
off, and a BAD stench coming from the water collection area. ITs
ridiculous that you tout to be “America’s number 1 brand” but know
jack about product design. The water from the fridge collects and is
“Expected” to evaporate from the heat of the compressor. The only
thing that happened was the kitchen was unbearable untill someone
needs to clean it manually. IT is degrading to say the least, and this
kind of turmoil is NOT expected from a company like yours.

Last Saturday (20th May 2006), the fridge shorted out. sparks flew
from the back and it blew. Now we called the service center, where
again, their callous nature infuriates any good soul. the fridge being
an integral part of any ones lives today, needs a quicker response
time. it took your technician 12 hours to come, and at 2030 hrs when
he finally comes, he said that the compressor was shorted out “due to
water leakage from the defrost container”.
now, to add insult to injury, he sees the model number and serial
number he said that the fridge was manufactured in 1990. and to make
matters worse, Merlin Electronics, the service provider cum sales
agent who handles “B class SALES, THAT IS CSD AND SECOND HAND GOODS”
has closed down.

Now, it takes me a lot of self control not to loose my cool when i
hear statements like this. Whirlpool’s sense of calling any service
officer a BGrade citizen by offering them anything but the best makes
my blood boil.

I feel sad that a company like yours, not being Indian, yet, does not
respect the very people who served and protected this nation. you as
Indians are then the worst breed who let things like this happen to
people who have served and given their lives for our nation.

I feel pity for you, your company and all around you for not being
able to judge whom to treat with respect and whom not to.

I will NEVER buy a whirlpool, I will Make sure NONE of my friends,
family, their friends and their family or anyone I come across buy
whirlpool.

I have a signed letter from the service technician saying that the
serial number says that the fridge was manufactured in 1990, and it
was sold to us in 1998. He has also signed that the circuit shorted
due to a water overflow from your defrost collection tray.

I don’t expect you folks to do Anything, because, in your minds, me,
my family and all the 6Lakh other service officers families are
“BGrade” citizens.

I have bought a new refrigerator, and its NOT a whirlpool.

Regards,
Madan

Indian Potpourri-Recipes,Culture,Ethnicity

What if we are actually alone in this universe?
i was just having a thought, we here reports nowadays of people dropping dead at 25 due to heart attacks, now why is that? our lifestyles are so terrible that we do not take care of our health and we push our bodies with no mercy. what if this is a cycle. like everything that has perpertrated this earth, this has happend before. then there is a huge explosion, Ice age starts again, and then man rebuilds everything.the mere existance of man on this earth has perpetratuted the relms of life. man (and women for that fact) have ruined, plundered, raped and abused all the resources that this earth has to offer us, that mother earth finally says, fuck off. and shuts down. and when that happens, the second ice age comes about, or would it be the nth ice age. where everything gets wiped off, and we all are terminated. but then, nature reboots and life as we know it starts from the beggings. and then we have the dinosars, and apes and then man, stone age, bronze age, coal age and then computer age.

but the sad thing of this cycle of life is the fact that the learnings of presevering nature and conservigin our resources would not be learnt again. so we as a race will ahve the hard path.

its very similar to the matrix, and the room. like the creator says, you need to die, and your code will go back into the matrix. for it needs to be started again.

what if life were like that?

what if we are really alone. and aliens are not aleiens but humans who in the previous incarnations of earth were able to develop technology so advance, but up to speed on their time, and they come back to earth after circling the universe. so we assume that its “time travel” but its actually just travel!

CRM: Managing Customers or Managing Expectations?

On the outset, the need to understand the customer has been growing steadily ever since the requirement for the customer profitability came before the term company profitability. The customers worth is no longer a term that refers to the personal assets of the individual but on how much he or she contributes the company coffers. In the urge to extract more from the customer, corporate are leveraging on technology to try and capture buying habits, and anything else that would help contribute to increasing the customers spend. The shift has been noticed from increasing the mind share of the product with the customer to increasing the “wallet” share, roughly translating to increasing the “per customer” spend.

According to a leading research house, wallet shares are increasing in India in the household sector. It has grown by a whopping 47% in 2005 as compared to the previous year. That means two things, one, being the companies are able to target their customers better, by placing the things that the consumer wants to buy alone on the shelves, or that consumers themselves have loosed their purse strings a little more. This can be evident from the exponential growth of disposable incomes that have risen to about 20 – 30% above the prevailing wages .

The advent of technology and the advancement in field of data mining has lead to companies targeting its specified clientele, the prime example is the diapers kept in the back, through the racks of toys, this forces children to go through them especially when they are being accompanied by their parents. The reseach that must have gone in to the entire exercise in order to execute this simple yet effective strategy in order to increase the “wallet Share” of the customer, must have been lots.

However, what if there was no technology, what if there existed smaller more personalized localized groceries as opposed to large super stores? What if there spirit of entrepreneurship broke out from the shackles of large corporations? What if the spirit of the small retailer or service provider was admired more than the discounts being offered by chain stores and larger chain retailers?

Prior to the advent of software and data mining technology how did stores manage to maintain and in fact grow relationships with their consumers? Personal relationships are the answer. There still exist shops that maintain these methods to maintain and grow the existing relationships.

One of the most fitting examples of managing customers is the local barbershop. The appearance of a person is the most important as that is what the world sees of them. The service being offered by this particular saloon has made me go back to him for about 8 years now. It is very simple. Everybody there greets with a smile. They know what kind of hair cut you would like. And they upsell. After the hair cut, they inevitably give you a small massage, after that they would ask you if you would like to oil your head and have a proper massage. Now, having sampled the goods, you are very tempted to give in, and this generally makes you feel much more relaxed.

So how does an establishment retain customers and grow them without technology? The answer is the human computer. Emotional level selling is something most marketers aim for, but few achieve. Striking a chord with the customer is like getting the formula of the magic portion (from Asterix), and this saloon does that.

The very simple fact of being recogonized boosts the image of the consumer to feel wanted. There is the warmth factor, the smile that makes all the difference. Once you are seated, you are asked if you want to cut it like how you did it the last time, if you are the experimenting sort, you would say no, and give another style, else, the regular cut. They cut, and then message.

So how do they keep in touch? They talk to the customers, enquire about their families, ask if everything is all right, and very polite questions. This brings to the next point of the power of observation. If some time you go with someone, they notice that and ask you the following time. All this adds brownie points.

Reading material while waiting for your turn: based on you appearance, the magazine is given. If you look like a native, you are given a local language paper. If you look like an outsider, you are given an English language periodical. Now, this is also done with caution, the local language periodicals are kept by the side, and the other periodical is given. This definitely adds brownie points as I am given what I want to read.

Upselling: as mentioned earlier, the massage, and sometime beauty treatments like face packs, shaves and hair treatment are also offered to the consumer, depending on the kind of customer who comes in.

Hence it can be seen that the advent of technology has not infiltrated this particular saloon, however, this has not deterd them from using CRM to acquire, retain but also grow customers. However, this case the Customer Relationship Management is just that, managing the relationships with the customer.

Just got back from a discussion with the chairman of a very very large conglomerate firm. the experience, of just being one of the faces in the crowd was amazing. seeing someone like him, up close and personal. however, any event is shrouded with beauracy, asskissing and ball licking (well, i just added that cause it rhymed). it was nice, nad i had to choose just this one great day to fall ill.
what i really admired, the humbleness of this great man. it really makes me think, leaders are made, they are born. humble, and so down to earth, it amazes me on these fronts. he actually came all the way to meet us, even though it was for a rather short time, he could have said he was busy, which i am sure he is, but to think he flew in, spoke to us, and flew back. i usually commute by car, not by a plane! WOW!

anywyas, i guess this is one day i will remember!

Just had my first corporate rape today!
it was done so smoothly, god! i knew it was coming, but did not want to think about i!
someone was to send me some files that i had to upload today( working in an IT Firm, you have to upload, download, in load out load, etc load etc!)
and he was like “i will do it over sunday, i promise!”
he did fuckall! unless he did work really hard to finsih it, fucker has forgotten to send it to me!
but the learning fromm this, i took me only 3omins to do, so i was wondering what was taking him so much time! gwad! these software companies! ridiclous!~

Capricorn Muses

a take on my friends blog! http://raghu1981.blogspot.com/

Well, if you actually look into the larger relm of life, you will see that cities that have the highest number of “cellphone thefts”, also have the highest floating population, low average age, and high levels of unemployment in the lower socio economic strat. now i am NOT pointing fingers here to say that they are doing it, or anything,all i am saying is that there are urges by people to go upto the level of comfort they see. i personally feel that the recent unrest in the city was a fitting example. the person who passed away was not a violent being. he advocated peace and in response, the rioting and damage caused not just to physical estabilshments, but the economy due to the closure of several insttitutions! appaling!
similarly, the university town of pune, the bastillion of shivaji, also one of the higest number of cellphone thefts. the best way to measure the cellphone theft rate is to measure the cell pohone sales rates.
cellphones are stolen, sold to first time phone users, the loosers go and buy legitimate phones.
just for them to get stolen again!
WELKOME.. to the moon!